A disk image is typically a the that contains the complete contents and structure of a storage medium, such as a hard disk drive, solid state drive, or other storage device. Thus, a disk image generally captures the master boot record (MBR), partitions, and the system of a storage device without requiring additional software to understand and parse specific partition and the system types.
Software developers take advantage of the simplicity offered by disk images in a number of solutions. For example, some backup solutions generate a complete disk image of a storage device, such that the device can later be restored by simply copying the disk image to the device. As another example, an enterprise with a thin client architecture can easily distribute a shared disk image to multiple client devices, thereby reducing the need for client-specific configuration.